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@starbreaker I quit facebook too, but the network effects aren't to be ignored. FB have been very successful at instigating themselves into the center of social activity for a lot of folks, and asking people to give up those connections is a big ask.
Also, it's particularly harder for people who are already being asked to do a lot of emotional labor to maintain social connections. Quitting FB is much harder if you're the "social representative" for your family.
@cercerilla@starbreaker I've never had a facebook account, but I often rely on my friends who do have facebook accounts to relay critical university-related information to me from a facebook.. group? or sth...
Even some official announcements, when students and not employees are responsible for making them, are on facebook instead of e-mail, website, or RSS. Many things that used to have websites now only have a facebook page. Surviving on university without using facebook is hard.
@Wolf480pl@cercerilla@starbreaker This is another reason why a Facebook account is so useful. It's not only huge in social connections, but organisational connections as well.
A great deal of grassroots activity within municipalities is organised via FB as well; not being involved there can mean you no longer can connect with other activists and advocates.
@ayachan@starbreaker@cercerilla@Wolf480pl It's easy to say "just give it up" and forget the importance of close social connections. Without FB I would have no contact with my friends, be isolated from networking events, and not attending any social organizing/protests.
Some people, for a variety of reasons, don't have the ability to leave and that's OK. Each person should decide what works best for them, and it's unhelpful to judge others when you don't know their situation.
@thindol@Wolf480pl@starbreaker@ayachan for me a big concern was the knowledge that by leaving FB I put a great deal of emotional labor onto my spouse. We had a discussion about it and decided that it was acceptable for us, but I think it’s important to be cognizant of how FB is, for a lot of folks, a tool for performing emotional labor. Given how much of this emotional labor is offloaded to women, I think it’s important to consider FB use in general a feminist issue
@cercerilla@ayachan@Wolf480pl@thindol This deserves a reply, but I had left your toot untouched for so long because I didn't have anything constructive to say.
@starbreaker@Wolf480pl@ayachan@cercerilla The point I'm hoping to make is that I 100% agree that Megacorporation Platforms Which Dominate Everything (Steam, FB, Google, etc) suck... they unfortunately also make up the fabric of our modern existence.
Perhaps a more productive branch is discussing how to mitigate the negatives of these platforms in ways that work for different people. Leaving worked for you, but doesn't for others - so how do we help? How do we subvert the systems?
@thindol@starbreaker@ayachan@cercerilla the systems profit from your personal data, so the most obvious way to kill them would be to keep your personal data away from them. For a moment I thought about end-to-end encryption, but that's no good - they care about the metadata more than they care about data. OTOH they had sth about estimating whether a post is positive or negative, so... maybe "don't use emoji or quick responses" and "use end-to-end encryption would be good first steps.
@cercerilla@ayachan@starbreaker@thindol Another idea would be to build third-party facebook clients (as in, apps for using facebook) and then doing some client-side filtering of what you get from facebook. Then add some algorithm that likes and posts random things, but filters them out client side. This should make the facebook servers confused. Not sure how their staff will react to it tho.
@thindol@starbreaker@ayachan@cercerilla actually, we could pull out all those mixnet, remailer, onion routing, etc. research and see how it can be applied on top of facebook.
@cercerilla@ayachan@starbreaker@thindol The problem is, once you get your friends to use some custom end-to-end encrypyion app, you could as well have convinced them to use mastodon/diaspora/email besides facebook.
@thindol@starbreaker@ayachan@cercerilla So the problem is: how do you protect yourself without cooperation from the person on the other end of conversation. Creating fake interactions would probably work, but only if facebook has no way to tell them apart.
@cercerilla@ayachan@starbreaker@thindol But any such strategy should be coupled with a strategy that progressively pulls your friends out of facebook. This could be done by eg. checking fb only once a day, but having notifications on other communication methods. This way people would have incentives to use those other communication methods because you'd reply faster.
@Wolf480pl@cercerilla@ayachan@starbreaker My main strategy so far is: check only once a day, post nothing personal, use Social Fixer + heavy blocking, max out privacy/advertisement/app blocking settings, never like/emoji only comments if necessary, no personal photos/images on the platform, anything deeper than "hi good seeing you" goes to text messages, and encourage friends to hang out here.
Scary bit: They own data even for people who've never used the service.
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@starbreaker @Wolf480pl @ayachan @cercerilla The point I'm hoping to make is that I 100% agree that Megacorporation Platforms Which Dominate Everything (Steam, FB, Google, etc) suck... they unfortunately also make up the fabric of our modern existence.
Perhaps a more productive branch is discussing how to mitigate the negatives of these platforms in ways that work for different people. Leaving worked for you, but doesn't for others - so how do we help? How do we subvert the systems?